bamboo fibre – Felting and Fiber Studio

Fibre and Friends

December 14, 2022 welshfelters Comments 21 comments

It’s been a while since I published anything, as I have been going through quite a difficult time. But I was determined to finish the year with a blog, so this one is a bit of an amalgamation! Way back in April, I was lucky enough to be invited on a day trip to Wonderwool 2022 by my friend Debbie. I hadn’t even heard of Wonderwool when she invited me, but when she told me all about it, I couldn’t wait to go!!

For those of you (like me) who have not heard of Wonderwool, it is an annual wool and natural fibre festival that is held in The Royal Welsh Showground, Llanelwedd, Builth Wells, Powys, Wales. It was first held in 2006, ‘to promote the market for Welsh wool and add value to product for small wool & fibre producers in Wales’. The festival has grown over the years, and ‘covers everything from the start to the end of the creative process’. There are exhibits of sheep, raw and hand dyed fibres, yarn, embellishments, equipment, dyes, books and also finished textile art, craft, clothing and home furnishings. Basically, it’s a felt and fibre artist’s dream come true, where like-minded people can find almost anything they need, and it instills a feeling of excitement, much like a child in a toy shop (at least that’s how I felt!) Because of the covid pandemic, it hadn’t run for a year or two, but this year was to be the first event since the pandemic, so there was great anticipation of the resuming of this popular event.

Around the same time, I had been looking for a carding machine, as I wanted to start making my own wool batts to spin. Just before my friend invited me to Wonderwool, I had found a lovely Pat Green Carder for sale on Facebook Marketplace, and I had decided to purchase it. However, the lady selling it (Mary Rogers) lived in Birmingham, England, so I was trying to work out when I could make the drive up to Birmingham to collect it. As it happened, Mary told me that she was planning to go to Wonderwool, and could bring the carder with her! Fantastic, I thought… this is definitely meant to be!! Don’t you just love it when things just fall into place?!

Having made all the arrangements, Debbie and I took the drive up to Builth Wells for the day, and boy, was I totally inspired! When we walked into Wonderwool, I can honestly say my eyes must have lit up! I really did feel like a child in a sweet shop!! There was stall after stall of beautiful fibre, yarn, and all things sheep (not to mention other types of fibre, including alpaca, angora to name a few)!! What struck me first, was the wonderful array of colour. There were exhibitions of different fibre craft, demonstrations of spinning and weaving, with exhibitors from all over the UK. We also had the chance to talk to a range of like-minded people, who were happy to share their tips and techniques with us. Wow, what a wonderful time we had!

One of the exhibitors we spent time talking to, was a lady by the name of Edna Gibson, who explained that she had spent time living in Japan being taught the wonderful art of Kumihimo, an umbrella term for several kinds of Japanese braidmaking that were unknown outside Japan until about 30 years ago. Edna told us that she was instrumental in introducing Kumihimo to the UK. The term Kumihimo is a composite of two words, ‘kumi’ meaning coming together or group, and ‘himo’ meaning string, cord, rope or braid. Whilst most of us will have heard of Samurai, I didn’t realise that the Samurai armour plates are laced together with cords, traditionally Kumihimo braids, which are also tied around ‘obis’, the sashes used on kimonos. Edna explained that she was taught Kumihimo by a very skilled Japanese person, and brought her knowledge back to the UK. The looms used for Kumihimo are known as ‘dai’ or ‘stands’, and are usually made from either wood or bamboo. All the dai are set up with carefully measured threads (as many as 80 strands of fine silk are wound on each bobbin or ‘tama’). The weighted bobbins are lifted and moved in specific repeated sequences to produce each type of braid. Traditionally, silk was used to make braids but today, braiders also use artificial silk or rayon.

This is my friend Debbie, with the lovely and very knowledgeable Edna.

This shows the two types of dai used. Apologies for the poor quality of this photo, but it was taken from one of the information boards Edna had put up…

The top photo shows braiding on a ‘Marudai’ and the bottom photo shows braiding on a ‘Takadai’.

Edna’s braiding…

As you can imagine, it was hard not to go on a full-out spending spree at Wonderwool!! There were so many beautiful fibres on offer, not to mention everything else!! I haven’t crocheted for many years, but was inspired by a beautiful pattern, by Janie Crow called ‘Mystical Lanterns’. I ended up purchasing both the pattern and the yarn! It’s a work in progress, but I’m enjoying the process!

These show some of the exhibits on show at Wonderwool. Hopefully, my scarf will turn out as lovely.

There were so many exhibits and stalls, too many to include here, but this will give you a flavour of a few of the exhibits on show…

To be honest, I was so busy choosing fibre to purchase, I didn’t take any photographs of the actual stalls!!

At the end of the day, I met up with Mary and her friend, to collect my drum carder. It was lovely to share a coffee and a chat with her, and she was able to share the history of the carder with me. We parted the day friends who share a passion for fibre, and agreed we would definitely meet up again at next year’s Wonderwool! We shared a ‘selfie’ before we left…

As I mentioned, I haven’t posted for a while, due to going through a very difficult period in my life, which resulted in me not having the energy or inclination to do any fibre craft whatsoever, so I had not actually even tried out my new carder until quite recently. But when I felt able to resume my spinning, I found it really helped me in a very mindful way. I particularly found that spinning brought me a sense of calm and peacefulness, with positivity and joy.

My first project was back in October, hence the autumnal colours! I put together a collection of merino fibre of different colours, with one part of bamboo in a dark shade. I weighed the fibre first, as I wanted to make two batts of fibre that I could spin ready to weave with.

Having never used a drum carder before, this was all experimental but in the end, I was really pleased with how it turned out…

I didn’t want to blend the fibre too much, as I wanted to have the different colours come through when I spun it. Also, I’d heard about people ending up with ‘mud’, so that was something else I wanted to avoid. Having blended my fibre to reflect my need, I then proceeded to spin it….

This shows the difference when using a flash (on the left) verses no flash (right).

Once I had filled my bobbin completely, I proceeded to wind it into a ball, so I could ply it from both ends of the yarn.

This is the finished yarn, once it was soaked to set the twist, thwacked and dried…

I’m quite pleased with the results. I also feel that my spinning has improved a bit since I posted on her last time! I’m looking forward to weaving with this yarn over the Christmas holiday period. Hopefully I will be able to show you the end product in my next blog!

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas and a happy, healthy 2023, from Lisa and Alex 🙂

Dutch and Russian Wool

March 20, 2015 zedster66 Comments 18 comments

I got some ‘Yellowish Dutch Wool‘ from wollknoll, 34 mic ‘not suitable for felting’, it said. It seemed to felt fine for me:

I don’t know what breed it is, I’d guess Texel, maybe someone who’s bought it knows? Here’s a close up of a corner:

I Thought I’d try a variety of fibres again, so the top row is a blend of black Viscose tops and Ingeo, the narrow band in the middle is Fake Angora, and the bottom is black Bamboo and White Bamboo blended.

Different angle:

This is a close up of the Viscose and Ingeo:

And close up of the fake Angora (it has a strange feel to it, and looks kind of waxy):

Another vaguely listed wool I bought was ‘Russian-Camelhair‘. I’m guessing from the way they describe things on wollknoll, that ‘Camelhair’ is the colour, it’s more reddish though. And this is also 34 mic but ‘This wool is especially suitable for felting’. Another guess is that this is Romanov wool. It seems to be double coated like a lot of the ones I ordered. I used Ramie fibre with this:

The circular parts are Ramie that I fluffed up then patted down into little discs:

This is a close up of Ramie just fluffed up and added:

The sun came out as I was taking this, I usually try not to take photos in the sun, but I liked this one:

Have you tried any new wools or fibres lately?

Yak and Bamboo Staple Fibre

September 1, 2014 zedster66 Comments 20 comments

I retook the photos of my Yak and Bluefaced Leicester pieces last week, but I’m only going to post about the Yak today. If I get chance I’ll post the BFL on my feltbyzed blog later in the week. I used Bamboo staple fibre with the Yak fibre, it is creamy white, soft and shiny just like bamboo top, but not being combed, it has more ‘character’. I added the fibre in different ways, some places more dense than others, and tried to keep some of the bamboo’s character.

The bamboo fibre is really shiny and the crimp catches the light.

This is the part in the middle at the top, I separated and fluffed up the bamboo fibre, but laid it on quite thickly:

This is the area just to the right and a bit further down. The fibres were teased a part a little, so are quite dense here too:

These next two pictures are were I added parts of bamboo fibre which had more curl or were crimped:

This is the patch mid to lower right where the bamboo fibres were fluffed up and less dense than in other areas:

I like the way bamboo fibre can be used so densely it almost appears like a layer of fabric, or sparsely so it isn’t quite so obvious until the light catches it. I thought it really ‘matched’ well with the Yak because they both felt soft and smooth.

Ingeo, Corriedale and Texture

June 29, 2014 zedster66 Comments 28 comments

I’m doing a craft fair next Sunday, 6th July at Victoria Baths, in Manchester, so I haven’t had chance to do any felting this week yet, so these two pieces are from a couple of weeks ago. This first one is dark brown Corriedale wool tops and Ingeo Fibre. Ingeo is a bit different to other fibres I use, it isn’t shiny as such, but it does have a sheen, and there’s also a soft almost ‘fluffy’ feel to it, without it actually looking fluffy. Lyn found this link for how it is made.

Here’s a closer view:

Here’s a Supermacro close up:

And here’s a supermacro of an area where the fibre were laid more thickly:

A while ago Marilyn sent me some fibres, one of them being some Domestic 56s wool tops, I tried them out on a texturey piece I made, mostly for the base, but also to add some texture between the base and top layer of 18.5 mic Merino. I liked the way they felted, similar to our English 56s.

I also used some Bluefaced Leicester Noil between the 2 layers. This is lower across the surface:

Some of the embellishment fibres I used were soy staple fibre, viscose and flax

I also used milk and bamboo fibres.

Nuno and Bamboo

November 27, 2013 zedster66 Comments 9 comments

I found time last week to make a notebook cover from the bright flowery nuno piece I recently made. The finished felt piece turned out bigger than I’d expected and I did play with the idea of making a passport style shoulder bag. Maybe if I’d had a nice button or some Delrin clips I would have, but in the end I thought a book cover would look nice. This is the front:

And this is the back:

I usually leave the natural felt edges on the inside front flap, but when I worked out the best position of the felt for the cover, it ended up on the inside back :

So the ‘neat’ cut edge is on the inside of the front.

I’ve been mostly working on some ideas using natural wools and fibres recently. As much as I like nuno and brightly coloured Merino, the natural shades of wools and fibres and the different textures and properties of the wools and fibres and how they work together is a bit of an obsession for me 🙂 I made a few pieces with different bamboo fibres this week. Some were just samples as I worked out the crinkles of ideas and played with the fibres to get the look I want. This is a sample piece I made using black bamboo blended with black merino:

This piece worked out just how I imagined and wanted it. It’s 18.5 mic Merino with bamboo staple fibre for subtle shiny texture:

What have you been working on lately?

New Notebook Cover

October 22, 2013 zedster66 Comments 10 comments

I thought I’d make myself a felt cover for a ring binder notebook I’ve started using for notes about batts, fibre packs and etsy listings. I made a piece of felt a few weeks ago from merino and embellishment fibre blends. I used lots of different fibres: Milk Protein fibre, Hemp, Flax, Ramie, Banana, Bamboo top and fibre; Viscose top and fibre, Trilobal nylon, Acrylic laps, Plastic fibre and Egyptian cotton. This is the whole piece after felting:

I recently made another notebook and made the straps to go through the Delrin clips from felt, and it looked really nice, so I thought I’d do the same for this one. This is the front:

It took hours to sew (at least 9 episodes of Hawaii Five – 0!) because I machine stitched the straps into place on the back (with my hand operated Singer), and then hand sewed everything else and finished off the edges with blanket stitch.